Instead of following the removals van, Nora made her own way out of the city to her new house. It was a long drive, but much of it familiar. After five hours, minutes from her destination, she hit a diversion, which led to a second, each yolk-yellow sign framed in black stirring something in Nora, something so deep-seated that at the current point in her life, recently widowed and moving back to the village of her childhood, and with all the attendant emotion of coming full circle in later life, she pushed it away, thinking: enough was enough. She wanted no more feelings welling up inside her, ever. 

The third diversion brought Nora back onto the motorway but in the opposite direction, almost immediately passing the removals van on the other side just indicating to turn off. She flashed her lights too late for them to see, so that she only succeeded in being flashed back repeatedly for semi-blinding the oncoming traffic. Totting it all up in her head, three diversions had added fifty-seven miles to her journey. How, she asked herself, had a woman native to these parts been unable to find a way round it all? The city had made her gullible. When she could, she made her way back to the initial diversion. The road was as it had been, with no sign of the removals van. Someone had blocked both sides of the road about a hundred metres from the brow of the hill over which she had been anticipating her first glimpse of her new house since childhood. She parked, and leaving the engine running, got out, glancing about her guiltily, to move the bollards. She should have moved two together, but again she was slow, so that as she lifted the second bollard, she was met by an elderly man launching himself from the nearby bus shelter on two walking sticks which he used to wave at her. His tweed suit looked older than Nora, its pattern naggingly familiar.

You can’t do that, he said. The road’s closed. Didn’t you see the sign? 

Nora closed her eyes and counted to ten. 

I’m going to have to ‘do that’ as you put it, she said mildly, because I’m moving in— moving back—

Back, you say. 

He let the sticks fall and stared at Nora so closely, so curiously, it felt like being touched. He wavered slightly, closing his eyes, and appeared to nod off, or worse die, there, propped up by his sticks and Nora felt a real fear that she’d finished him off somehow, but just as she was reaching to take his pulse, he reared back into waking, with an, Aye that would be the old Bass house, one of the Hanforth Bass’s—

Ah, Nora thought inwardly. No, she said firmly, the Basses, this branch, where Willis Basses—there hasn’t been a Hanforth Bass since Billy Hanforth Bass died at Ypres.

The man drummed his sticks on the road, and in the lines of his face she found something which, in conjunction with ancient tweed, produced the question: Mr John Willis?

His smiled brought huge creases all over his ancient face. Aye, that’s me.

It’s me, Nora, she said. And then, shaking her head in disbelief, she said, Mr John Willis, are you quite sure? 

Fifty years ago, throughout her childhood, Nora’s mother had unfailingly used the moniker The Retired Headmaster John Willis to differentiate him from his father. 

Good god, Nora said. How are you still alive? 

Nora’s removal van was tracked down lost among the narrow lanes, its satnav so confused it had taken refuge in speaking in Swedish. John Willis, aged one hundred and thirteen, at his best guess, with the help of two sticks and a lot of shuffling, insisted on nudging the bollards aside so that the van could drive through and down the empty road, parking directly outside Nora’s cottage, something unimaginable in the city. In the quiet she heard a dog barking on a distant farm, an owl hoot, and the tremble of her own breathing as she watched her possessions being carried into the house. In less than an hour the van was emptied out and the removal men were on their way. Nora let the house’s noises work themselves up around her. 

She’d come across the house by happenstance in a magazine at the funeral directors after Bill died. Whoever had bought it after her mother died clearly hadn’t lived here, since the wallpaper was that of memory. It couldn’t be a coincidence, she thought, despite the trance she’d been in, that here at a juncture in her life, number twenty-nine the high street, Dillies, the home of childhood, appearing before her like a beacon in the night. The photograph awakened memories that seemed bright in the muffled sadness of her present: the deep grey stone, the more soulful grey of the Welsh-slate roof, the wooden porch with silver lichen growing on the easterly side, the sound of the latch on the black iron fence, and the heliotrope purple against the kitchen wall. She could feel the way her feet used to fit sideways, snugly, in the steps going over the dry-stone wall from the sheep meadow below, over the road and up the three steps to the gate where she and her friends used to sit and stare at the view. She could picture that view most sharply of all, though she could not at that moment conjure the image of Bill at all. That was grief, she’d been told.

That evening, under the light of a full moon, she stood among the boxes, slightly stunned at what she’d done, smelling the old scent of the wallpaper, seeing familiar scuffs on the walls, the old kitchen flagstones, the same one still wobbly. My house, she thought. The Basses. Ours, not yours and mine, Bill. She felt a sudden dry sob and then was calm. 

She slept surprisingly well and was woken early by pale yellow light. Sitting on the step with the gate behind her taking in the vanishing mist on the hills, she drank a cup of weak tea huddled beneath an old cardigan buttoned at the neck like a cape over her pyjamas. She took a deep breath of sheep-tinged air. Back in the kitchen she suffered a momentary weariness at the great hole she was teering around, that all the boxes in the world could not fill. So much remained to be done, nothing, virtually, had found a place yet, and no will in her, it seemed, to do any of it. She was startled out of her slump by a knock at the door, the back door, the door locals tended to use. She stood in the dark hall as a shape sharpened into familiarity through the paned glass of the door. She rushed to lift the latch, her hand surprising her by shaking a little, and then gathering the door towards her body, she came face to face with the boy who had called on her every day to walk to school. 

Owen Taskell, she beamed at the feel of those familiar words in her mouth. 

He had always been Owen Taskell, never just Owen, since that was the name on the register just. It had been Nora Bass, Mary Pierce, and Owen Taskell, the trio of kids from Dillies. The boyish Owen had become the spitting image of his grandfather although with effort she managed not to say so aloud. Instead, joyfully, they rallied back and forth between them the staggering time since they had last met: fifty years! fifty years? fifty years! Nora was crying and laughing.  

When I heard it was you, here, I didn’t know if you’d remember me, Owen told her shyly, removing a large handkerchief from his top pocket and blowing his nose, a sure sign that he was moved. My wife was certain that you’d know me, he exclaimed and then, in that nervous way she had forgotten, he repeated to her the entire conversation with his wife that morning. All the while Nora was thinking that the idea of Owen Taskell married tickled her so much she wanted to squeeze up her face and laugh. 

Remind me again who you married, Nora said, when she had control of her face. 

Jackie, he explained, adding, Jackie Pacey. Nora sieved her memories for a memory of any kind connected with that name. 

Oh, she said at last, relieved. Of course you did. Jackie Pacey. 

The Taskells, like Nora’s mother’s family, had been for farmers for generations while the Paceys, Nora remembered, were animal feed producers, and more importantly for the gene pool, not from the village. 

We wanted to welcome you, Owen explained. 

Nora opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say. Literally. The last time a neighbour had spoken to her it had been in the city and she’d had to call the police. 

How kind of you, she said, still with her city-dwellers habit of clinging with both hands to the edge of the door, unable to rid herself of the urge to shut it and maintain a wall between the public world and her small private kingdom.  

No, I mean, really welcome you, Owen continued, eyeing her, perhaps sensing her struggle. He had a habit of swaying as he spoke, another thing she’d forgotten, and as he swayed over the word really, he brought his nettly scent towards her, and with it a rush of memory. She released her hands from the door. Can we tonight, Owen asked. In the hall —Dillies has a village hall now, did you know that? …. Well, use of a barn—

When Nora hesitated, he pleaded with her. 

Do come Nora, it’s for you, entirely in your honour. It would mean a lot to me. To the whole village.

Nora felt slightly embarrassed at the part about the village but she nodded, because it was Owen, and what else did she have to do? 

Straight up the street, turn left just after the letter box in case you’ve forgotten, Owen said, winking and so, not knowing what else to do, Nora winked back. 

Wonderful. Owen became an award middle aged stranger again. Six-thirty? But the way he lifted his voice, turning the sentence into a question, was so familiar it made her feel a different Nora, directly descended from the schoolgirl she had been, without family, without her two girls, her career. While she was feeling all these strange emotions, Owen was acting out a curious little tug-o-war, which she realised once he’d given up and headed to the gate, was a re-enactment of calving with both hands tugging and one booted leg in the air, for which, he was suggesting, he would have to be up early.

Oh, she called after him, funny, I get it. Isn’t it late to be calving, or is it early? I forget which.

 He made a wave in the air which she knew instinctively meant that it didn’t matter. With a sudden fierce affection, she watched his head wearing the old familiar flat cap walk past the dry-stone wall at the end of the garden.

Six-thirty, turn after the post box, she called after him loudly and she could feel him smiling. 

Nora felt the house making room for her slowly, guiding her hand as to where to place things as she unwrapped them from white paper and remembered them anew. Despite her best efforts to declutter, to take what wasn’t needed to charity shops or the tip, she had brought so much she didn’t need. It made her feel her life hitherto had been wasteful, too material, though it had been much more than that, she knew. Towards the afternoon, she had another period of flatness when she sat on the crowded couch and stared at the wall. She’d been having these periods of listlessness since the funeral. Her daughter, lately married, and as a result, apparently permitted to tell Nora her own thoughts, had diagnosed Nora’s bouts of lethargy as thwarted retirement syndrome. Lots of people your age have it, she’d said. You’d planned all these things to do with dad and now dad is gone, and your future is an entirely different future than you planned for. She was probably right, Nora thought, pulling on her boots and letting herself out into the apricot light of early evening at precisely five past six. 

The air smelled fresh, with a hint of cut grass, perhaps someone somewhere was cutting hay, she thought, since it had been a fine day and fine days at any time of year were not to be wasted. As she walked, she took in how little the hamlet had changed. A smattering of stone farmsteads, several of which were whitewashed, all of which were low ceilinged, with uneven slate roofs clumped with moss and everything connected by the dry-stone walls like running hems across the hillside. Versions of the same roses grew up the same walls of her childhood. Even versions of the same cats eyed her through windows as she passed. She ran her hand lightly over a patch of moss on one of the stones in the wall that ran towards the Wallace family farm, the delicate fonds, chocolate brown with a hint of gold to them. She felt the quiet pull of the past here, as she walked. 

Briefly, she felt she might just keep walking and somehow solve the unsolvable feelings inside her that were grief itself. Certainly, it was harder to feel lonely here, where, despite the space, everyone seemed to know where she walked; where the dogs, and the sheep and even the jackdaws seemed to be watching her, corresponding with some unseen higher power. She had a brief longing to walk until she was too tired to think, to be swallowed by the hills and grass and sky. But the feeling ended when she glimpsed the deep red of a post box set in another stretch of dry stone wall. Its cheerful face brought a sudden feeling of warmth towards Owen and his wife. Walking across the farmyard, she saw a sign on the door to a recently built barn, which read, Dillies Village Hall. Nora pushed her way inside. 

Though it was an overcast day, Nora’s eyes needed a few moments to adjust to the gloom inside. Indeed the darkness felt alien and it occurred to her that in the word barn, she had anticipated the chinks of light of the old stone barns she had grown up with. Behind her, the rush of the curtain at the door being closed completed the darkness so that Nora hesitated where she stood afraid of tripping over obstacles she couldn’t anticipate. It was with some gratitude that she felt the presence of someone fumbling around, trying to reinstate the lighting, although she still jumped when that same person put a hand on her shoulder and said, Nora. 

The person, she assumed it was Owen at the time, although it was a woman’s voice, in retrospect, brought a light with them, a bright white halogen light that Nora assumed to be a torch but which was actually coming down from the ceiling, revealing the curious, and to Nora, laughable sight of fifteen people circled around her wearing hooded white cloaks. 

Klansmen in Dillies, she said, finding the whole scene so risible she snorted.

The nearest cloaked figure resembled the silhouette from her back door windows that morning—the familiar jutting chin, the slight sway. Owen? She said, stepping towards him, expecting him to pull back the hood and reveal something. A candid camera moment perhaps. But he didn’t. However, she felt he was listening and even imagined she could see the tips of his earlobes turning red like they used to. 

She was about to say something rude but then it occurred to her that perhaps they wanted her to play along slowly uncovering people to show she remembered them. So she stepped back slightly into the centre of the circle and rotated looking at each in turn, all of them holding a candle, a candle she assumed to be fake until one caught the polyester robe of the small figure nearest the door and its smouldering set off the fire alarm. Nora fetched a fire extinguisher from the kitchenette wall and doused the smoking figure with foam. 

All the while the drama unfolded the group had been emitting a yogic hum that became a form of chanting. 

Setting down the fire extinguisher, Nora emitted a long groan, and then a rising hysteria, that came out as a series of sounds, oh, oh, oh, until she started to laugh uncontrollably, almost hysterically as all of the last few months seemed to force itself out of her.

When she had a calmed down, her laughter was prompted yet again by the farm wellies and unmistakably headshape of a Crawford, and beside him, the nose of a Pierce slightly visible in profile—

Is that a Crawford beside you, Mary Pierce? 

The man sheepishly drew back his hood. Definitely a Crawford though far younger than any she had known; but Mary Pierce, dear Mary Pierce, looked the same woman Nora had known as a girl. 

She found herself at the heart of a ball of interlocked arms, of talking heads and pressing bodies. Voices she hadn’t heard in decades spoke her name. Welcome home, Mary Pierce said, Mary’s voice loudest on account of having been nearest to Nora when the mob descended. Nora found herself claimed by Gillie Wyndham as others receded, Gilllie with the same ancient dimples, and the ever-silent David Hanforth, friend and one time boyfriend of her mother. Together these were representatives of the so-called Fifteen Farms which together comprised the hamlet of Dillies. There were faces she knew, versions of faces now in much later life, and old faces become young again so that even the faces that were entirely new to her were familiar. 

Through the room with two walking sticks waving to her like the mouth pieces of some labouring beetle, she spotted John Willis who after waving at her tried to get out his cloak by backing out of it, only to get caught, so that he had to be slowly unwound. 

By this point, the lights were back on, the kettle was audibly boiling and someone had arranged several pounds of homemade parkin on a plate, the sight of which made Nora’s mouth water. A tray of mugs emblazoned with the surnames of the fifteen families was being carried around. Nora was given the Bass mug as the last living representative of her maternal family other than her daughters, to whom the name meant nothing. She coddled the mug tenderly. She couldn’t be surprised her mother’s family meant little to her girls since she herself had rather forgotten its history having living so long cut off from it. Here, the mug was telling her, that name represented a way of life and most of all, the interconnectedness of all these families. There was a lump in Nora’s throat as she watched the cloaks bring folded and stored into a plastic vacuum-pack bag. 

Gillie Wyndham explained, They came to us in a mix up, wrong order or something online.  When we heard a city woman had bought the house we were crestfallen.  We thought me might use these to give her a little fright….

But when Owen said it was me you went ahead anyway? 

Nora snorted.

We’d all got so excited about it, Mary Pierce said, giving Nora’s shoulders a squeeze. You should’ve seen how hard we practised. Besides, the Nora Bass we knew would find it funny, we knew she would. 

And I did, though I’m a little disappointed you haven’t formed a cult in my absence, Nora told them, grinning still at the memory of it. 

Standing listening to her Owen was rolling back and forth over on his ankles and Nora knew what that meant, and wasn’t surprised when Jackie said, not entirely seriously, I suppose that depends on how you define a cult.

John Willis distracted everyone away from the conversation by breaking a plate on the ground while trying to pocket a load of parkin while still wearing tweed. Gillie Wyndham fetched him a plate to eat off, saying, Eat it now, lad. Don’t get crumbs in your pockets, while Mary Pierce swept up the mess with a broom while appealing to Nora. 

We need your help. 

To do what? Nora asked, seated at the table, accepting a refill of tea in her cup.

This new government—

This new ministry—

David Hanforth opened his mouth, which was audible with the dentures he war, and everyone was silenced and waited for him to speak. 

When Martha Wallace died, her farm, you remember it, Nora? he asked and Nora nodded. Lovely place, good-sized farm, beautiful pasture, he said. Some developer got whiff of it and wanted to turn it into houses. Houses, I ask you, building holidays homes. No wonder everyone born here’s having to move away. 

It’s holiday cottages, nothing useful, Jackie muttered. 

They were going to bulldoze the house, the barn—

The pond! Gillie added.

Though no trout it in, John Willis murmured, glumly.

A working farm should stay a working farm, David said as though for everyone there and much banging on tables and stamping of visits ensued before Owen added, We, the community didn’t want to see good working farmland wasted. 

The MP was next to useless, in with the developers, Mary said.

Went to school with the owner himself, Gillie added, crossing his fingers. Thick as thieves they were.

Owen continued. The situation seemed hopeless. The farm had passed to Martha’s great nephew, who’d never even been there, had no idea what to do with a farm except sell it. But we tracked him down, begged him not to sell it to anyone but us, which he did, good man, though the developer offered him all kinds of sweeteners, Nora, you wouldn’t imagine what they could afford to throw at it. But somehow, between us, we raised the money, with a little help from the God’s Own County Bank and now my great nephew Matty and his wife Miriam farm it. 

And it’s a joy to see, Gillie added.

We thought that was it but they just moved onto the next farm, Nora, Jackie explained. We can’t buy them all. 

Farming’s a hard life, Gillie Wyndham said, suddenly, disturbingly, serious. Farms like ours are going under all over the place, and young folk aren’t interested in coming back and taking up the old ways.

It is a hard life, Nora said gently, thinking of her own two daughters. 

But worth it, Owen told her. 

And now, this new government has created a position to oversee rural development, appointed some lass who worked all her life as a developer— 

They’re calling it taking the reins of development into central government and allowing us no right to complain, Owen said, looking fierce. 

Telling us what to farm and how—

Concreting our green spaces. 

Forcing us to set aside farming to tourism. Holiday parks, caravan sites, hotels galore—

Turbines in rivers, widening lanes—

Privatising views.

They’re not farmers, John Willis said simply. They don’t understand farming. 

What are you going to do? Nora asked. 

Mary Pierce unfolded a sheet of the local newspaper, the Dillies Explainer, and spread it on the table. They’re sending her here, this new minister, Mary said. This so-called Minister for Rural Affairs, Gillian Webb, is coming here, to Dillies—soon.

We can’t let her set foot in Dillies, Jackie said fiercely. Everyone cheered.

How can I help? Nora asked. 

Gillie brought more water for tea and those that had been agitatedly walking around came to sit at the table, pulling their chairs close. 

It turned out that somehow, and Nora was almost afraid to ask how, the village of Dillies had placed a mole in the new-fangled Ministry for Rural Affairs. The new minister’s diary had been photographed: the grainy image of a calendar showed the date of arrival as the last Wednesday of August. At least the kids will be on holiday, John Willis said before falling asleep at the war cabinet table. Jackie fetched a blanket for him. Mary taped sixty pieces of white paper to the wall, one for each day of the two months they had to prepare. She wrote out the days in blue marker with a large red exclamation point on the day of the trip itself. D-Day, she added. 

Nora discovered that the group had already divided itself into squads based on their available skills and resources. You will be with me Mary Pierce explained, in the control centre here. It was to be John Willis and me, but two months is a long time when you’re his age. The control room was on a little elevated stage fashioned by the Crawford boys, partitioned from the main hall by floral curtains circa 1953, relocated from John Willis’ father’s cottage. Fourteen old school desks, the wooden kind with liftable lids, had been lashed together with bailer twine and the local vicar had donated old church pews from a deconsecrated church in the neighbouring parish, now a part time seed store. Jackie’s nephews had contributed walkie talkies, and a central control, and Nora had brought a whiteboard on which she wrote notes. Whenever they met, they remained in their groups, roughly by task, and more accurately by family, since resources differed from farm to farm. Bob Crawford had installed a map inside the roof cavity which Mary liked to pull down and point at for emphasis. The map made Nora feel proud. Every farm had been marked on it with the cut-throughs in dotted red lines. Possible engagement points were marked in black. On the cork board was a set of engagement tools, signalled by post-its and pins looped together with string, and possible routes for the Minister marked in orange paint.

There were sheep to be used to clog up the lanes, legions of ducks and geese, silage to be spilled, manure, a potential mud slippage, gravel, and animal feed, and carrots, potatoes and onions to fall out the back of wagons. Someone had even suggested a sink hole. How on earth do we create one of those, which Gillie had been very keen on and was still reading up.  

Is it enough, though, Jackie asked daily, and almost every morning someone came up with something new except Nora, who felt a little awed by it all. For several weeks during meetings, she wondered if there was something she could contribute. She had no stock, no knowledge of mining, or geology, no tractor to block up a lane. All she had was her voice (she had once wanted to be an actress) and her great grandmother’s divining rod, which had sat on top of her mantlepiece for years looking like something a dog had left, until her teenage daughters demanded she store it in the garage.   

It’s a shame it’s summer and the rivers are so low, David Hanforth said. It was warm and his sheepdog was panting. 

Nora’s eyes grew. What about a flood?

Since the flood was her idea, the preparation became part of Nora’s focus. There were many streams and tributaries running down the hills, but the likely route of the minister made flooding from existing watercourses almost impossible. The roads were generally higher than the rivers and given it was meteorologically summer during the visit, most of the streams were merely trickles. Even the distant reservoir was unusually low, doubtless leaking, since no one had ever thought there was need to repair it when water was ordinarily so abundant. Nora walked the fields of her childhood with relish. Sometimes she would pause to catch her breath, remarking on some feature or other to her husband as though he were with her. Once she brought the divining rod, but felt too foolish to hold it in front of her. Why any Yorkshire woman needed one had always amused her, when there was never a shortage of water. But then the world was changing, Nora told herself, and water was changing with it. 

Nora spent part of everyday walking sections of the route that the minister would most likely take, and also many of the diversions they were planning, thinking, thinking, about ways to include water, and failing. There had been a few grey days of mist and drizzle when what they needed was a biblical deluge. On her ancestral farm, Basses, tenanted by a cousin of John Willis, the highest and poorest and most windswept of all the farms in the region, its lambs noticeably smaller, as they had always been, born up to six weeks later than the lambs born lower in the valley. The sound of the lambs calling to their mothers and each other made her feel happy. Watching a pair of twins chasing one another with such joy, Nora felt a surge of anger at her husband for dying and missing it all. No matter how many times she saw spring in these hills, it would never be enough. 

She had been investigating ways of damning the upper streams, with the help of Jarvis, grandson of John Willis’s cousin, and a hydraulic winch. They were positioning old stumps at different places to see the amount of water they could catch, when Nora heard something that made her hold up her hand so that Jarvis turned off the tractor and poked his head out of the cab. She listened again and started hurrying towards the sound: It was a lamb trapped underground. Occasionally they fell into boggy patches, or down ravines, or even more rarely into underground caves. Most often they were just wedged in the river by rocks and debris. Jarvis scampered after her. 

There, Jarvis pointed down- river, beyond a point where the water vanished from sight between a cliff and low hanging vegetation. After a lot of poking around in the vegetation, Nora found a small entrance to a cave. A very small entrance. I’ll go, Nora said, since she wasn’t claustrophobic, and Jarvis clearly was. She crawled in on her belly, following the sound of the lamb crying. The cave had several light wells from where the ceiling had collapsed, and was light enough to find the lamb and pick it up. She had to walk some distance carrying the lamb, which lay in her arms rather sluggishly, looking for a better way out, calling to Jarvis, who had found one of the ceiling holes, to be careful, that the roof of the cave might be too weak to take his weight. As she walked further along the stream still inside the cave, she heard the sound of the tractor, seemingly beneath her, which was impossible, until she realised it was the road, and that the tractor she could hear was Gillie Wyndham come to look for her. Back in the war room, as David Hanforth’s granddaughter bottle-fed the lamb, they all searched a geological map for Nora’s cave. Nora found it. Then they held their breath as she calculated the distance to the road, and how likely, if released, the water could flood it. It was perfect. 

Early on the day of the Minister’s visit, the Dillies Fifteen learned from the mole that the Gillian Webb would be flying in a doner’s helicopter to allow her more time to look at development sites around Dillies. Woken by the news over the walkie talkie, Nora was speechless with anger. The team banded together early, with Gillie bringing an offer of help from his great nephew, Logan, who worked on local radio. Logan was a weatherman and he offered to change the local forecast to strong gales so that no craft could official land. When the rural affairs office forced a local farmer to accommodate the helicopter landing in a field, the farmer informed them that the sound of the helicopter fighting the wind would be dangerous for his remaining few cows yet to calf. The chopper was sent back beyond the county line and the Minister was to be driven the last fifty miles. 

Bingo, Gillie said, when he received confirmation that the Minister had landed in Northumberland. They turned the map upside down, since and worked their plan backwards looking for holes now that the direction of travel had changed. Amazingly, as though god herself were listening, Nora said, the wind picked up and a tree felled itself on one of the hardest roads to reroute, so that a diversion was set up even before they started. 

Mary and Nora were on their second pot of tea in the control room even before the sun was fully up, using a child’s wooden to car on a scaled down map to show where the Minister was likely to be at any given time. 

I can’t believe she’s really coming, Mary said, as she fumbled with the opening of a packet of hobnobs, since Nora’s hands were already shaking from the strong tea. 

I hate waiting, Nora said taking one of the biscuits offered to her and biting into it.  

I know, Mary said. We’ve all of us already been to too many funerals to enjoy a wait. 

John Willis, who has sitting in a wheelchair since a recent fall, snoring softly, was woken by the crinkling of the biscuit package and wheeled himself over. 

If this is really the end of things, he said grimly, I might as well die now.

Don’t you give them the satisfaction of finishing you off, Nora said. 

Mary Pierce’s cousin’s boys had drones up and ready when the car driving the minister crossed within a ten-mile radius of the control centre. Right, Nora spoke into the walkie talkie. They’re on home soil. Alright diversion team, Nora called, feeling a little prick of satisfaction as she said the words, Set Piece One, now! 

Mary set the egg timer to go and she, Nora and John Willis watched the sand filter through, waiting for confirmation that the signs were in place, and the road temporarily blocked, and that all transport was hidden in the wings to wait. 

Set Piece One completed, Jimmy Crawford said over the radio.

Car approaching, one of the drone drivers added. Car slowing, the same voice added. Car stopped. 

Everyone held their breaths.

Car reversing, someone said and there were whoops.

As soon as someone has an idea of where it’s headed, whether it’s following the diversion etc, say so, Nora boomed. She had been a continuity announcer for most of her career and she was in her element. She could feel Mary beside her barely breathing. 

The car is turning off the main road onto the Eden Bridge trunk road, a voice that sounded like Barry Willis’ came over the radio. 

Hanforths, David Hanforth summoned lots of young voices over the airwaves. The Hanforths were sheep famers who, in recent years, having experimented with organic farming had dabbled in free-range poultry, including some very territorial geese. 

Diversion team, Set Piece Two, Nora said, on cue, and there were several affirming grunts and the sound of heaving breathing as the team lugged diversion signs across the sheep fields towards the corner. 

Sheep needed, Harry Taskell said, we’re not going to be finished in time.

Sheep, sheep, on the corner of the Eden Bridge trunk and west meadows, his twin sister Nell Taskell added, and then the radio waves were heavy with the sound of sheep bleating and the contrapuntal grunt of the sheepdog directing them where they were needed.

Just in the nick of time, Nell said, audibly out of breath. The car is approaching now.

Nora heard voices as the driver of the jaguar spoke to one of the Hanforth grandkids who had popped up dressed as a lost Duke-of-Edinburgh hiker. 

Nora and Mary conferred. Should we send one of the learner drivers? 

Without the need to be asked, David Hanforth drove his granddaughter Georgie over the fields to the east meadow where a tractor was parked with prominent L plates on the front and back. 

Just as the Jaguar reversed round the bend, David narrated, it met a tractor pulling a load of cow muck, executing a very laboured three point turn. When the back wheel got stuck, you should have seen the driver’s face, and Georgie getting out the cab in tears, telling him, what was the point of anything anymore. What an actress, David narrated proudly, since George was ordinarily an expert tractor handler. Nora heard the echo of voices on the road, curses growing higher, and louder, and the sound of the Jaguar reversing angrily. There was smoke at the wheels there, David told them after, real smoke, we are getting to the driver.

Is Georgie alright? Nora asked, adding, I do hope the driver doesn’t do something foolish. Three diversions is enough to turn many people completely crackers.

The third diversion was already in place, a voice told Nora, bringing her back to the present task. David Hanforth told Georgie to sit on the bank and leave the tractor as it was just in case the car came back. 

The only route for the car was a single track, unpaved by road, long and winding, seeming in places to go back on itself, Nora had always thought, often filled with sheep that had escaped, or farmers hunting for them. It would bring the car out near the stretch of road just below Nora’s cave system.

Looks like you’re needed, John Willis told Nora, with one eye peeping open from under his cap. 

Looks like I am, Nora said, since the thought had been slow to raise itself in her. She felt suddenly afraid of letting people down. 

You’ll be fine, Mary Pierce said, seeing Nora’s face. You can do this, Nora.

Nora’s on her way, Mary said over the airwaves. And so Nora had to make it so. As she left the command centre, Gillie was waiting to drive her there. Got the detonator, he asked, and Nora peeped back into her handbag for the umpteenth time that day and swallowed. Yes, I do, she said. 

The plan was for one of Jackie’s family feed trucks to block the way on the main road, once the Jaguar reached the main road, so that it had only one direction it could take, towards the cave. The truck was in place, Piper Groves, Jackie’s second cousin’s child, already having positioned the truck, and sitting up a tree looking for the cloud of dust to suggest the approach of the car. Must be having difficulties, I can’t see it yet, she said. 

A young Wallace sent up a drone to check and found the car parked, with the driver’s door open, with the driver standing peering under the boot of the car at the exhaust. Must have cracked it, a Crawford said. Crawfords knowing their mechanics. 

The Jaguar emerged backwards out of the road, minus part of its exhaust, and met with the parked animal feed truck. There’s arguing going on inside, Piper said into the walkie talkie. 

The car tried to through the field to get round the truck by the mud was soft and the field itself with a devilish slope to it and the driver, already covered in mud, was said to be pushing it.

I almost feel sorry for him, Mary said.

He should know when to quit, the Wallace piloting the drone retorted, and there were mutterings of agreement. Mary sounded contrite. I didn’t mean, she began, but the sound of the Jaguar’s wheels spinning made the rest of whatever she had been about to say inaudible. 

One of the Hanforth shepherds up a nearby tree communicated that the car had turned towards Nora’s direction and was setting off.  

Good, good, Nora said, though she was inwardly trembling with responsibility. What if it didn’t stop the car, she wondered, or what if the flood washed the car off the road? It wasn’t as if they’d had chance to practise. She had no idea of how much water was going to surge onto the road. Perhaps we should try another diversion, she said to Simon Wallace, as he dropped her off.

You can do this Nora, he said. We all have faith in you. 

Peter, the Hanforth shepherd, was ready to urge his flock of ducks and geese onto the road if Nora needed more time. But Nora was already running towards the sight, clutching her bag. In her bag she had a huge block of wensleydale cheese. At the site, Nora took out the cheese, lifted the chute lid, at the bottom of which they’d inserted an industrial sieve which would break up the cheese from the weight of its fall and disperse it below to a sleeping ball of ferrets currently weighing down the trap door to the water flow. Once they moved, assuming they moved as one, the trap door would open and the water gush onto the road. The ferrets had been collected from every family anyone knew, including Gillie Wyndham’s prize breeding pair. Count me down, Nora said into the walkie talkie. I’m ready when you are.

The drone pilot told her it was about a minute and a half at current speed, without any distractions before the car was close enough for her to hear it. Peter Hanforth assured everyone that he had the geese under control. He confessed to losing the duck, Roger, although thankfully not to the road: Roger had taken itself up a tree to roost and wouldn’t come down. We can take the hit, his father told him. Leave Roger. I repeat, leave Roger. 

Ten, nine, eight, the countdown began. Nora’s hand on the detonator was shaking. The detonator was a long, padded stick for shoving the cheese down through the sieve if required, since they had not been able to practise this part. 

Two, one, go—

Nora lifted the hatch, admiring the handle which the Crawfords had fashioned beautifully, she noticed, and shoved the cheese manually into the hole, following with the stick, which was telescopic, but remarkably sturdy. 

How’s it going Nora, Mary asked. Nora had been holding her breath and felt quite lightheaded from the effort of ramming the stick down hard. It’s through, she said, breathlessly, all the cheese is through, any moment now, the ferrets should smell it and move, if they haven’t already—

They have, they have, water is gushing onto the road, Peter Hanforth shouted excitedly, from his vantage point with Roger up a tree. He was in the valley side, now, slightly below the road, but due to the height of the tree itself, slightly above it, and with excellent line of sight. 

It’s absolutely gushing. Well done, Nora, he said. There was some honking and quacking on the line. Nora waited, not sure what to wish for. No injuries certainly. No foolish acts of desperation. If only you were here, Bill. How I wish I could ask what you think. You were the engineer, she though, not for the first time. But she also thought, you would have loved this, you would have absolutely loved this, especially the ferrets.

Nora was about to ask for the position of the car when she heard the thump and strange absence of sound as it hit the water and aquaplaned before coming to an abrupt stop. She heard the driver, though she couldn’t tell whether he had remained in the car or whether anyone had been injured when the car hit the water. But then she heard a female voice. A shouty voice sounding enormously angry. Thank god, thank god, Nora thought. Aloud she said, I can hear them both and the car is silent.  

The ferrets were caught easily being unusually full of cheese and therefore sleepy and disinclined to squeeze themselves down holes. The road had become a canal with a beautiful black Jaguar stranded and smeary since the waters receded. Photos of the abandoned vehicles fronted all the major newspapers, the best showing the driver and the minister sitting on the roof with their legs through the sunroof, a dangling rope from mountain rescue just in view. The rescue team eventually winched them to safety despite heroically buffeting winds, the like of which, locals said, they had not seen in a generation. The car remained stranded, blocking the road into the village for several days.

The Minister of Rural Affairs declined to comment when asked why their minister had been on the edges of Dillies. She saw no greenbelt land during her visit and met with no developers. A later statement from Number 10 explained that the minister had chosen to resign over misuse of her governmental car, for which she apologised unreservedly. The car was picked up by one of the Crawfords, in their capacity as local scrap merchant, and it is currently being melted down into something industrial, useful, they claim.

The Ministry for Rural Affairs is to be disbanded and the oversight of rural affairs set to devolve to the county shires, although this communication only reaches the shires through backchannels, whispers of whispers—every county, it seems, having its own mole, or the same mole juggling many allegiances. On hearing the news, Nora walks out of her cottage, leaving the doors unlocked as usual, to discover the entire village setting up tables and chairs on a small section of road known as the street. Owen and Jackie have pre-emptively sealed off the road and the Taskell twins taken two diversion signs out on a quad bike to give due notice that the road was closed. The yolk-yellow and black theme is picked up in bunting which Nora has been helping to sew, and she stands now on a small ladder outside her house pinning bunting to the rafters, linking her home with those of her neighbours. There are yellow egg sandwiches on the table, three varieties of yellow sponge, yellow ice buns, and yellow sugared parkin. In all eighty-seven members of the Dillies Fifteen raise a toast to John Willis who lately passed away. He had asked to be buried with a diversion sign, and his family obliged. The party continues past the point when some of the smaller children, and some of the adults, are sleepy, the children, the very small ones, able to press their faces into the bellies of their parents to block out the light. Nora turns her eyes towards the clear sky, the first stars becoming visible, as the yellow light of day is softly nudged into night. 

Editor's Pick online fiction short fiction short stories